The leader of the Labor opposition Keir Starmer has once again caused a political storm by ensuring that his party “does not want divergence” with the European Union. All together, the conservatives have loaded the artillery, accusing him of wanting to revoke Brexit and of plotting re-entry into the EU, with the help of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Starmer’s new statements occurred again outside the United Kingdom, while passing through Canada, where he declared that “the more values ??we share (with the EU) the more we will share the future and the less conflict we will have.” In the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Labor leader reiterated his intention not to deviate from EU rules and “not to lower environmental standards, or labor rights, or food standards, or anything else.”
His words were amplified by the conservative media and especially by The Daily Mail, which is setting the agenda for Rishi Sunak and his shift towards the hard right. The British tabloid headlined directly with “the betrayal of Brexit” and opened the Tories’ cannon of thunder.
“Keir (Starmer) voted to remain, and then he supported a second referendum, and then he backed out,” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly declared at the time. “He Now he wants to return to the EU but without the name. What really is Labour’s position?”
“Starmer wants to return to the EU for all purposes and reactivate the Brexit agony of the past,” warned housing secretary Michael Gove, Boris Johnson’s former traveling companion in the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel fired back: “Starmer has spent the last eight years opposing Brexit in Parliament and trying to overturn it. He and his party are ‘married’ to the EU and the era of European sovereignty.”
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith assured for his part that behind Starmer’s maneuvers “is the influence of Tony Blair” and the decision to take “small steps towards the EU.” “We now know exactly what Starmer’s plan is for a Labor Government,” Duncan Smith added. “They want to leave us attached to the EU with an umbilical cord, and little by little they will say that this is not useful, and then they will come back with the idea that the best thing would be to return to membership and renegotiate re-entry.”
“Labor’s mask has fallen: what they really want is to take us back to the EU,” concluded Iain Duncan Smith, recalling the existence of an alleged plan designed by Blair – and aired by several conservative media during the recent meeting of Starmer with Emmanuel Macron in Paris – to bring the UK closer to the EU as an “associate member”.
In the midst of the controversy, Starmer has reiterated that he does not plan a return to the EU, nor re-entry into the single market or the customs union. The Labor leader has insisted that his purpose is to “make Brexit work”, but the narrative is already being set by the conservative media, anticipating what will be one of Rishi Sunak’s main lines of attack in the 2024 campaign. .
Starmer has meanwhile been criticized by the right and the left for his silence in the face of Sunak’s “reversal” in action on climate change, with his express renunciation of most of the objectives to reach zero emissions set by en his day by Boris Johnson. Sunak’s plan has been harshly criticized even in Conservative ranks, but the Labor leader has decided not to respond personally or present an alternative plan.
